1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an indoor unit, an air conditioner having the indoor unit and a method of controlling the air conditioner.
2. Description of the Related Art
Microorganism such as bacteria, virus, fungus, etc. (hereinafter referred to as “virus, etc.”) float in indoor air, and thus air blown out from an air conditioner also unexceptionally contains virus, etc. If the virus, etc. contained in indoor air are inactivated, sterilized, decomposed, removed or the like (hereinafter referred to as “filtered”) and then the filtered air is blown out from the air conditioner into the room, it is expected to have an effect of lowering the risk of infection, induction of allergy, adverse effect, etc. to people with weak defense power or even general people in congested areas, and it can be practically used.
In view of this problem, there is known an air cleaning technique for an air conditioner to which an air cleaner for oxidizing, decomposing and removing harmful materials from air is connected. According to this method, air is once sucked from a room and filtered to oxidize, decompose and remove harmful materials from the air, and then returned to the air conditioner. The filtered air is air-conditioned in the air conditioner and then clean air is blown out to the room (for example, JP-A-2003-250876).
In this air cleaning technique, however, the air cleaner is assembled and installed separately from the air conditioner, and they are connected to each other through air flowing pipes. Accordingly, the overall construction of the air conditioner and the air cleaner are excessively large, that is, this technique requires a large installation space. Furthermore, the air conditioner and the air cleaner must be manufactured and fabricated separately from each other, and thus the total number of parts constituting the air conditioner and the air cleaner must be increased, so that the manufacturing cost thereof is increased. In addition, with respect to the maintenance of the air conditioner and the air cleaner, they must be separately subjected to maintenance and check works. Therefore, the maintenance and check works are cumbersome.